Certain memories in our lives are etched in our minds like a photograph. It seems to never change, well maybe a little, and will always be there.
The picture was my mother, younger sister, Deborah, age eight, and my uncle, La Verne Bueghly, walking, more like tromping with heads down against the wind and heavy snow. They were coming up the road to our house and top of the hill. Sometimes they would almost walk into the ditch due to the blinding snow storm.
They were making it slowly from our Chevy that was stranded on the mile gravel road that ran the one-quarter mile south and adjacent to our farm and on west to highway 14. From the stranded car, it was close to a quarter mile to the corner and then another quarter mile up to our house. It was by no means an easy journey with a storm raging.
I'm not sure why my sister, Doris, and I didn't try to help in some way by calling a neighbor or who knows? I just remember sitting with Doris and watching patiently and helplessly out out our dining room window.
Let's go back to the very beginning of the story. It was a Saturday and mom had taken Deborah to Marshalltown for a haircut. Doris, had worked that morning at Hawkeye Chevrolet in Newton where she was employed. After having lunch with her husband to be, Clyde Eddy, she came home in the afternoon.
Mom had called us from Marshalltown in that they were headed home and for us to stay put as a snow storm was coming. She called again from Laurel and said she was bringing uncle La Verne with them as he had car trouble. He sold health insurance at the time and was in the Laurel area.
They made it all the way across the mile gravel road from highway 14 until they hit a really big snow drift on the last quarter mile. One major cause of the drifting was the cluster of surplus grain bins erected in the 1950's by the U.S. Government on land adjacent and on the south side of that road. The name on the sides of the numerous circular bins was "Butler." Thus, we called it "Butlerville."
The bins acted as a gigantic snow fence and created huge snow drifts across the road. During a really big snow storm like this one, they would be large enough to dwarf an automobile. As mom, Deborah, and La Verne headed out from the stranded car, mom had given La Verne an apron to tie around his head as he did not have a hat. It was an amusing sight.
The following day the county snow plow made its way across from the west to our stranded vehicle. I can still see it ram the drift and only advancing a few feet at a time. Then it would back up and hit the drift again and again. It finally made it to our buried car from its snowy grave.
Aunt Vivian, La Verne's wife and mom's sister, could never understand why uncle La Verne could not make it back to their house in Marshalltown. If only she could have witnessed it all!
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